Hardy

Consider using stable

This is a short how to build the latest svn version. Please note that SVN version may be buggy and crash often. This is released for people who want to help testing or need the very latest features. If you are not of developer kind, you are suggested to install the stable version from the repositories using Synaptic or from command line:

sudo apt-get install inkscape

Unstable developement version

Installing dependencies

If you are sure you can face Inkscape being unstable, then please continue reading. First you should install all the requirements. This can be done by:

Compiling

Change your current directory to the inkscape.

cd inkscape

As you may have already noticed this folder contains some files with all CAPITAL letters like README, INSTALL, HACKING, COPYING and probably others. These contain the latest information how to build the program. The README file says if you have no configure script in the current directory you should run autogen script to create it:

./autogen

Now run configure script which detects your system variables, installed software etc.:

./configure

of, if you want to have inkboard enabled,

./configure --enable-inkboard

And if configure ends with no error messages, you are the lucky one, all system requirements are met. Run make for the compiling.

make

This may take some time, probably hours, depending on your machine's speed.
You can continue by installing using "make install" (not recommended, as debian package manager will know nothing about new package) or using checkinstall. If checkinstall is not installed, you can install it the usual way "sudo apt-get install checkinstall".

sudo checkinstall

Happy inkscapeing.

Dapper and Edgy

If you're going to build Inkscape, you'll need to have a full complement of build requirements. This is very easy to do in Ubuntu Dapper and Edgy:

Note: the libgc-6.7 that is available in Edgy removes the need for the following: